Scammers Slid into My DMs. It Didn’t End Well. For them.
This morning I got a message claiming my business page was about to be deleted for “identity theft.”
The message looked like this:
⚠️ Your Facebook page may be permanently deleted due to identity theft...
[“Review now” scam link]
Regards, Support Team © 2025
Yeah… no.
You’re really going to try that on someone who wrote a cybersecurity book?
I had a bit of fun replying:
“Really? You’re sending this to a cybersecurity expert? You are toast.”
Social Engineering Hack Attempt
🔎 Here’s why this was an obvious scam:
- 🚩 The sender wasn’t Meta or Facebook — just some guy named Lucas Rey
- 🚩 The second link (the one they wanted me to click) led to a shady .my.id phishing site
- 🚩 Threats + urgency = classic social engineering
- 🚩 “Support Team © 2025”? Cute. Professional scammers need better graphic designers.
🧠 The Lesson:
Social engineering works because it feels official, scary, and urgent. Even smart people fall for it — especially when caught off-guard. It is the most effective way for "hacking" because people are always the weakest link even in the most secure systems.
But if you stay calm and think logically (or just use a VPN and spam filter), these kinds of attacks crumble.
If you’re promoting anything online — affiliate offers, services, or your own brand — you need to be alert. Scammers target creators, too.
Don’t let them use your trust as a weapon.
Stay sharp, friends.
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Recent Comments
33
Hey Magus, what an interesting article about being vigilant online. There are so many scams online, and you can so easily fall for them. Even though I am also well-versed with almost anything online, I also fell for a few of these before. It makes you feel so dumb when you get caught, but they tricked you so easily.
You are luckily well-informed and skilled as a cybersecurity expert, and this is your superpower. I assume that if you clicked that link, they would have taken over your page and made it their own or something like that. Maybe your page is doing well, and they thought they didn't want to start from scratch. Sometimes they just do it for fun, without any purpose; that is just a waste of time and intelligence. If I were a con artist, I would exploit the opportunity to earn some easy money.
Most of their end goal is financial. If they get hold of a FB account they can do a long list of things. Contact your friends in your name and ask for help (money) or get private information to get their account as well, get real names, email addresses, phone numbers that can be used for a number of scams, and eventually build a successful social engineering, taking advantage of the weakest link in every security system: people.
This is really scary stuff, and we should always be vigilant and cautious. Use 2FA whenever possible.
Thank you for this very important message. Scammers are the worst. I almost fell for a Jury Duty Scam. What made it so real is that I had missed my jury duty because my dad had just died and I was in such an emotional state when the scammer called me. He actually kept me on the phone with him for over an hour and I finally realized I was being scammed and hung up.
Wow. If you need me to give you some pointers in case that happens again, let me know. Unless you already did your research.
Whenever I see messages from scammers on facebook regarding that I am using somebody else's name or something like that.
I click, Delete, Delete and Delete.
I dont fall for any of these personal messages either in my facebook or messages that are supposed to be from facebook coming through my website and even if it REALLY was from facebook META it would still get deleted.
Regards
Brian
It is always nice to hear that others get these scammers, too. Being reminded of what to watch for is always a good thing as well. Those people are everywhere!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and suggestions on the problem.
Sami
Absolutely. Luckily my personal accounts are super safe, using password manager, VPN, etc, but I have a Facebook page and sadly last year FB was badly breached and I learned later that some of my info was taken too. I keep it safe, but certain things are already out there, so I will get these messages and attempts. Only, they don't know who they are dealing with so they are up for a surprise lol
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I am based in Australia. The Telcos regularly block SMS scams (using fake links to Amazon, Netflix, DHL...). they are normally easy to spot - and the telco I work for blocks MILLIONS (yep - MILLIONS) EVERY month. And still they come and still people fall for them.
Great past @magus - a timely reminder to all about cybersecurity and their operating models.
Yes. Like I said, people are the weakest link. That is why education about cybersecurity is so important.